Serving Time in “HELL”

Instructors teaching the History of the English Language (HEL) will well recognize the challenge of covering its broad chronological scope. Additionally, convenient fictions about discrete historical periods and the uniformity of linguistic changes across synchronic varieties make chronological organization of a HEL course a problematic device. This chapter speaks to how an instructor could engage students in thinking critically about HEL’s chronological conventions by framing the course around a specific diachronic textual tradition. The author offers a practical example: a sequence of exercises based on vernacular translations of the “Shepherd Psalm.” Additionally, the chapter demonstrates how an instructor teaching HEL to literature students can get them to attend more closely to questions about language.